IE7. Why does it open Firefox?
Discussion
Sent the following to Microsoft to get an official response from them but any feedback from people who actually know something about computers would be appreciated...
This is a long and protracted story so please be patient. I bought this computer in 2004 with Windows XP Home installed along with the version of IE that had been installed at the time. Version 5, I seem to remember. After hearing several unfavourable comments regarding the early versions of SP1 for XP home I turned off my automatic updates and installed McAfee Internet Security Suite and started using Firefox instead of IE. Sorry to say that at the time, Firefox was a considerably superior product to IE. Recently McAfee decided to change the rules slightly on how they defined secure and kindly turned back on the automatic updates feature for XP. So the last few days have been an interesting experience with my poor PC being bombarded with constant messages that it needs to be upgraded. Persistence from yourselves and McAfee finally got the better of me and I downloaded a seemingly endless stream of updates include SP2 for XP Home and a nice new upgrade to IE7. After the umpteenth re-boot as proscribed with almost every update the machine settled back down and I finally thought... Let's see if they've improved IE. Now where did that damned icon go. Surely it can't be scared of Firefox after it's been souped up to be the best web browser out there. Obviously it was still scared as it had left my desktop entirely. Under the guise of IE5 it had been hovering just below the Recycle Bin. Now it was nowhere to be seen. Curiouser and Curiouser I thought. Ok. So let's look in the control panel as there used to be an option to enable / disable whether the IE icon was displayed on the desktop. Nope. That option's been removed. (Now at this point I would like to point out that until IE has proved itself, Firefox is still my default browser and will remain as such until proof has been made.) So after digging around I found the IE program hiding away in the bowels of my C drive. Double click to open it up... So far so good. It pops up. Takes it's time a bit but maybe that's first date fears.. I'll let it off. Right. Click on a link. IE pauses.. The flashing lights on the front of my computer go into warp speed and...... Ready for this...
Firefox opens up! Not quite what I expected I must admit. Do I take it then that IE is admitting defeat?
So I think to myself that this must be a joke. So I open up IE again. Still takes a moment or so to fire up... Hmm.. Ok this time I'll type in an address (www.yahoo.com) and see what happens. Hey look a new tab in Firefox opens up.
So I sit here reporting an unusual issue with IE writing it using Firefox. Before you ask, before attempting to open IE, no other browsers were active. No error messages were displayed.
Any thoughts you may have would be appreciated as I would like to give you a second chance.
Cheers.
Ralf.
message sent to Microsoft said:
This is a long and protracted story so please be patient. I bought this computer in 2004 with Windows XP Home installed along with the version of IE that had been installed at the time. Version 5, I seem to remember. After hearing several unfavourable comments regarding the early versions of SP1 for XP home I turned off my automatic updates and installed McAfee Internet Security Suite and started using Firefox instead of IE. Sorry to say that at the time, Firefox was a considerably superior product to IE. Recently McAfee decided to change the rules slightly on how they defined secure and kindly turned back on the automatic updates feature for XP. So the last few days have been an interesting experience with my poor PC being bombarded with constant messages that it needs to be upgraded. Persistence from yourselves and McAfee finally got the better of me and I downloaded a seemingly endless stream of updates include SP2 for XP Home and a nice new upgrade to IE7. After the umpteenth re-boot as proscribed with almost every update the machine settled back down and I finally thought... Let's see if they've improved IE. Now where did that damned icon go. Surely it can't be scared of Firefox after it's been souped up to be the best web browser out there. Obviously it was still scared as it had left my desktop entirely. Under the guise of IE5 it had been hovering just below the Recycle Bin. Now it was nowhere to be seen. Curiouser and Curiouser I thought. Ok. So let's look in the control panel as there used to be an option to enable / disable whether the IE icon was displayed on the desktop. Nope. That option's been removed. (Now at this point I would like to point out that until IE has proved itself, Firefox is still my default browser and will remain as such until proof has been made.) So after digging around I found the IE program hiding away in the bowels of my C drive. Double click to open it up... So far so good. It pops up. Takes it's time a bit but maybe that's first date fears.. I'll let it off. Right. Click on a link. IE pauses.. The flashing lights on the front of my computer go into warp speed and...... Ready for this...
Firefox opens up! Not quite what I expected I must admit. Do I take it then that IE is admitting defeat?
So I think to myself that this must be a joke. So I open up IE again. Still takes a moment or so to fire up... Hmm.. Ok this time I'll type in an address (www.yahoo.com) and see what happens. Hey look a new tab in Firefox opens up.
So I sit here reporting an unusual issue with IE writing it using Firefox. Before you ask, before attempting to open IE, no other browsers were active. No error messages were displayed.
Any thoughts you may have would be appreciated as I would like to give you a second chance.
Cheers.
Ralf.
Scraggles said:
recent format and IE7 has tabs much like firefox, but they seperate programs
however did read the micrsoft published their version of firefox, this is different from mozilla FF
however did read the micrsoft published their version of firefox, this is different from mozilla FF
What, this one?
www.msfirefox.com/microsoft-firefox/index.html
FunkyGibbon said:
have you told IE7 to be your default web browser? if not then when you follow any hyperlink it will open the default (in your case firefox).
Oh bugger! Older versions of IE would work even though they were not set as the default browser. Right I'll make the change and see what happens. Thanks for that.
malman said:
Scraggles said:
recent format and IE7 has tabs much like firefox, but they seperate programs
however did read the micrsoft published their version of firefox, this is different from mozilla FF
however did read the micrsoft published their version of firefox, this is different from mozilla FF
What, this one?
www.msfirefox.com/microsoft-firefox/index.html
Very good well written site & very funny. Thankyou
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